To think people need to be released from the idea that they must 'stay safe'?

[TheDailyCarbuncle]

IMO people's heads have been messed with on an absolutely massive scale during this pandemic. So many people seem to be locked into the idea that they absolutely must avoid getting covid at all costs, no matter what, to the extent that they're convinced that if they don't do everything possible to 'stay safe' then they're definitely going to die.

I genuinely think that the extent to which governments around the world have convinced people that the only thing that matters is this virus is a far far far bigger problem than the virus itself. I think governments are too cowardly to say what needs to be said, which is that there is no way to prevent everyone from getting it, and that attempting to prevent it is causing so many other problems that it just can't be done any more.

I think people are being driven around the twist with the idea that this threat is out there, lurking at all times, waiting to get them. It's like a form of mental torture, with people questioning everything and worrying about everything, while the economy crumbles around them.

There is no guarantee of a vaccine or of more effective treatments. There is every chance that covid will still be circulating, along with every other virus, in 2030. You could do everything absolutely 'right' now and still get it next year or in five years.

I get the fact that it was new, unprecedented, etc. But where do we draw the line? When will the acceptance come? When it's too late and there's no way to restore the millions of jobs lost? When economies have collapsed so much that poverty, violence and starvation make covid look like a walk in the park?

@TheDailyCarbuncle

No I'm saying 20% of the people who have been tested and have had the illness, are badly affected while the 80% of people who have had the virus, have no or minor symptoms. I though that would be bloody obvious as the antigen testing is demonstrating a very low number who have had and recovered from the virus. 5-8% of the population, although I haven't checked it recently. However it is still low. There is zero herd immunity.

I think the language used is important though op.

Encouraging people to live life, within the guidelines and following correct infection control procedures is positive in my book.

Telling people that they are hysterical, dementors, demanding never ending lockdown unless they are enthusiastically running to the pub this weekend or ignoring all restrictions in favour of their own risk assessments - I think that's harmful and risks tipping us back into lockdown.

@Jrobhatch29

Is the World Health Organisation good enough for you?

[quote puzzledpiece]@TheDailyCarbuncle

No I'm saying 20% of the people who have been tested and have had the illness, are badly affected while the 80% of people who have had the virus, have no or minor symptoms. I though that would be bloody obvious as the antigen testing is demonstrating a very low number who have had and recovered from the virus. 5-8% of the population, although I haven't checked it recently. However it is still low. There is zero herd immunity. [/quote]
So 20% of confirmed cases? Basically what china said before they had no idea of how many people had had the virus or of the huge amount of people who are asymptomatic. 20% of the general public who catch it are not severely effected. If that was the case the hospitals really would have been overwhelmed.
Also I posted a study earlier that suggests that for every one person who tested positive for antibodies, another two were positive for TCells. So it is quite likely alot more people have had it than the 5-7% prediction

[quote puzzledpiece]@Jrobhatch29

Is the World Health Organisation good enough for you?

[/quote]
Again. Based on confirmed cases. Confirmed cases are a drop in the ocean compared to true amount of cases

That WHO post says 1 in 5 need hospital treatment. If 3.5 million (antibody tests) have had it that would mean 700,000 would have been hospitalised. Its clearly less than 20% in the general population and confirmed cases cannot be used as a rule for the general public.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras

I think the language used is important though op.

Encouraging people to live life, within the guidelines and following correct infection control procedures is positive in my book.

Telling people that they are hysterical, dementors, demanding never ending lockdown unless they are enthusiastically running to the pub this weekend or ignoring all restrictions in favour of their own risk assessments - I think that's harmful and risks tipping us back into lockdown.

I never said the word hysterical or dementor or any of the rest of that.

We have three choices as I see it:

1. We remain shuttered in our homes, fearful of the virus and refusing to engage with the world until it goes away completely. Unless you’re very high risk, this is an over-reaction to the current situation where infections are significantly down on where they were...

2. We’re all “released from the need to stay safe” and go back to exactly how things were pre-March. We recognise that Covid is pretty low risk for most of us and carry on our lives 100% normally. If we did this, things would likely be fine for a few weeks... but exponential growth would set in again, and we’d be back at square 1 in a month or two, and we could repeat the journeys of Texas and some other US states and have our ICUs fill back to capacity.... Given that shutting back down is the absolute very last thing the Trump-supporting a Republican Governors of these states wanted to do, you can hardly write-off their reactions as a liberal over-reaction. In other words, we take 100% of freedom now in exchange for a likely retrenchment in a couple of months.... pretty dumb

3. But it’s not all black and white like @TheDailyCarbuncle seems to think. We recognise the virus is still there, albeit assuming significantly subdued, and take back the 75% of normal life that’s now on offer and don’t live in fear.... We go shopping, but continue to socially distance; we go to the pub, but don’t give our name as Mickey Mouse as we huddle closely in a pack of 20 on tables illicitly pulled together; we don’t organise birthday parties where 30 mates cram into our house; we go on public transport but do wear a mask etc. etc. Then our 75% freedom becomes 80%, 90% etc....

Even if we think the worldwide reaction to Covid is a massive over-reaction, if you want your freedom, demanding it and releasing yourself from any thoughts or responsibility is entirely counter-productive and very stupid.... and you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot.

YABU. The original post is hysterical, exaggerated and doesn't have much basis in the reality I live in.

You do you OP. But I think your post is nonsense.

So we have to lockdown to ensure that people get treatment, except that during lockdown people didn't get treatment?

At least they have a chance of treatment after lockdown. Normal treatment would not have gone on even without a lockdown, but it would still not be going on, rather than now having a chance to come back.

I had treatment cancelled and I don't know when I'm going to be able to get it. It wasn't lockdown that caused it to be cancelled it was the hospital needing to focus on treating covid patients and managing the infection risk to non-covid patients. If they have to go back to that situation again, I'll never get my treatment. I'm not being some kind of saintly altruist here. I'm desperate for my local hospital to be able to treat people as normal. If I thought that was more likely to have happened if we hadn't locked down I'd be the first to say so. I don't think that's true though.

Maybe for the next pandemic we'll have tracking and tracing ready to go from when the first rumours of a new disease crop up, maybe we'll take the risk more seriously and be able to avoid such a late and damaging lockdown. Awful as the effects have been, I don't think we had a choice this time.

I had treatment cancelled and I don't know when I'm going to be able to get it. It wasn't lockdown that caused it to be cancelled it was the hospital needing to focus on treating covid patients and managing the infection risk to non-covid patients

Indeed, the idea that lockdown was the cause of non-Covid treatment being postponed is completely ridiculous.

Covid was the cause of non-Covid treatment being postponed, lockdown or no lockdown.... (though with no lockdown, the postponement would have lasted much longer).

Governments and medical experts in every country in the world agreed this needed doing to avoid a bigger loss of life. If they come to mumsnet and learn they were wrong I'm sure they will be devastated.

^ this - not only in response to this thread but the many others of the same ilk. Someone on another thread was saying that the whole world (apart from their good selves obviously) had entered into a mass delusion.

Really 🙄?

I have started to think that everyone will get it eventually, and those that will die of it will die of it eventually. That doesn't mean it's not worth trying to slow the spread, because more time gives more opportunities to find effective treatments.

And many people need hospital treatment to survive, which they wouldn't be able to get if numbers are really high.
And if health workers also get ill.

@Derbygerbil

We have three choices as I see it:

1. We remain shuttered in our homes, fearful of the virus and refusing to engage with the world until it goes away completely. Unless you’re very high risk, this is an over-reaction to the current situation where infections are significantly down on where they were...

2. We’re all “released from the need to stay safe” and go back to exactly how things were pre-March. We recognise that Covid is pretty low risk for most of us and carry on our lives 100% normally. If we did this, things would likely be fine for a few weeks... but exponential growth would set in again, and we’d be back at square 1 in a month or two, and we could repeat the journeys of Texas and some other US states and have our ICUs fill back to capacity.... Given that shutting back down is the absolute very last thing the Trump-supporting a Republican Governors of these states wanted to do, you can hardly write-off their reactions as a liberal over-reaction. In other words, we take 100% of freedom now in exchange for a likely retrenchment in a couple of months.... pretty dumb

3. But it’s not all black and white like @TheDailyCarbuncle seems to think. We recognise the virus is still there, albeit assuming significantly subdued, and take back the 75% of normal life that’s now on offer and don’t live in fear.... We go shopping, but continue to socially distance; we go to the pub, but don’t give our name as Mickey Mouse as we huddle closely in a pack of 20 on tables illicitly pulled together; we don’t organise birthday parties where 30 mates cram into our house; we go on public transport but do wear a mask etc. etc. Then our 75% freedom becomes 80%, 90% etc....

Even if we think the worldwide reaction to Covid is a massive over-reaction, if you want your freedom, demanding it and releasing yourself from any thoughts or responsibility is entirely counter-productive and very stupid.... and you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot.

I've obviously not been clear because how you've described what I said doesn't match what I intended to say at all. I at no point said everyone should just ignore the risk as if it isn't there. Regardless I can't be bothered repeating or restating what I've said, over and over.

funding the distribution of a vaccine on a large scale for a virus that doesn't kill most of the people it infects won't be economically viable.
Of course it is economically viable. It doesn't matter that it doesn't kill everyone. Measles, rubella. Mumps, TB polio, the flu etc don't kill eveyone yet it is economically viable to vaccinate a high proportion of the population because even if an illness doesn't kill someone they can have serious after effects from it and they can pass it on. Even children can and do pass it on.
A fairly high proportion of the population need to be vaccinated to make the vaccine effective.

@Nonnymum

funding the distribution of a vaccine on a large scale for a virus that doesn't kill most of the people it infects won't be economically viable. Of course it is economically viable. It doesn't matter that it doesn't kill everyone. Measles, rubella. Mumps, TB polio, the flu etc don't kill eveyone yet it is economically viable to vaccinate a high proportion of the population because even if an illness doesn't kill someone they can have serious after effects from it and they can pass it on. Even children can and do pass it on. A fairly high proportion of the population need to be vaccinated to make the vaccine effective.

I said the virus doesn't kill most of the people it infects, not that it doesn't kill everyone.

TB is one of top ten causes of death in the world - 1.5 million people died from it in 2018. A vaccine isn't offered in the UK as standard because even though it's 'deadly' disease, the risk to the UK population isn't high enough to warrant the cost of vaccination.

If a vaccine is developed, it's likely that it'll only be offered to vulnerable people, similar to the flu vaccine.

But thousands of people were denied treatment when they became ill with Covid. That's my point.

They were, because mistakes were made. They have been publicised and admitted to (though sadly not in that order). The response was confused and panicked. We are not in the same place as we were 12 weeks ago - a US physician being interviewed for TV yesterday said he learns something new every single day about the nature of the disease and how it should be treated.

Saying someone is not “eligible” for ICU treatment because it is felt that it would not ultimately benefit or cure them is not the same as “denying“ them treatment. In your work as an RGN did you not come across patients who were not offered every single treatment in the book for very good reasons?

Totally agree O0. I am sick to death of hearing about keeping 'safe'.

Totally agree O0. I am sick to death of hearing about keeping 'safe'.

What we do now will define the next ten years. It IS a knife edge, and in that term I agree that is our predicament.

We stay at home and stay safe = our economy totally stalls and the country goes under

We open every sector and we continue our lives as before = a second wave is guaranteed and we will be back in a lockdown within weeks.

We have got to somehow walk a tightrope of keeping things going, with the greatest of care we carefully restart the engines. We don't party with hundreds, nor go to gigs or mass gatherings, but we do live our lives in the safest possible way as tiptoe into the autumn. Now is not the time to throw in the towel all caution to the wind, nor is at a time to hunker down and hope the virus will disappear.

The countries with a sensible and considerate societies will fare better than those that are reckless. Bournemouth aside, I am hopeful that the majority fully understands what is required of us.

If we have a workable vaccine in the next 1-2 years then it will be offered to everyone (though no doubt the vulnerable will get it first) because otherwise we would be in a situation where those with money would pay for their own vaccines and those without couldn't. Even this Tory government doesn't want to be accused of leaving poor people to die in their millions.

(It's quite possible the vaccine will be poor value for money at that point, but that's a separate and secondary issue.)

'I think people are being driven around the twist with the idea that this threat is out there, lurking at all times, waiting to get them.

Some people are. I don't think most people are tbh. Most people I know in real life and on FB are going about their lives as far as they can and are cautiously happy that shops and pubs are opening and schools are going back in September.

The media would have you believe that the world is currently divided into two groups- irresponsible rule flouting yobs and terrified people disinfecting their shopping and still afraid to leave their homes. I think most people are in the middle - calmly following the rules and embracing the relaxation of rules as it unfolds.

@lazylinguist I agree with this. I also have to keep reminding myself that MN does not represent the majority

@Worldgonecrazy

Yanbu. If you’re of working age you’re more likely to die in a car crash travelling to work than die of Covid 19.

The Governments own documents tell us that the population were deliberately manipulated to feel personally threatened in order to ensure compliance with lockdown.

The media is also culpable, so we get ridiculous headlines about 400% increases in cases, as they know most won’t read past the headline to the actual numbers.

People are actually terrified of Covid 19 in a way I’ve never seen people frightened before, even though we have awful viruses and illnesses in circulation. I’m sure sociologists will have some interesting debates in a couple of decades about how the fear was created.

Yea, over half a million dead in just a few months (and we’re just getting started) - I wonder what ‘created’ this fear?!